Content Curation is a hot topic in today’s online world because of the amount of information available; and it’s a skill small business owners need for an effective social media strategy. Users quickly get overwhelmed with all the content that comes their way, and appreciate people who can help them find the best resources on their favorite topics.
If you are trying to become known as a go-to resource for your target audience, then becoming an effective content Curator should be one of your goals.
Not sure what we mean by “Content Curation”?
In this context, it refers to finding content that interests your target audience, choosing select pieces of content, adding your own comments/opinions (if applicable), and then sharing that content on your social sites.
There are numerous ways and tools available to set up a content curation system; in this post we concentrate on using Pinterest. With optimized topic boards, the site’s powerful internal Search feature, and secret boards, Pinterest can be a very efficient tool in your content curation system.
Here are 3 ways to use the visual appeal of Pins and boards, and the longer life-span of a Pin (compared to a post on Facebook or a Tweet on Twitter) in your business’ content curation.
1. Optimized Topic Boards
What are the most popular topics of interest to your target audience? Create several boards based on those topics to build helpful collections of resources for your followers.
Use keywords in the board’s description, and topic-based hashtags in the Pins you upload or re-pin.
Note: As Pinterest’s latest updates roll out, you will soon be able to follow “topics”, which may make your content curation even easier. By following a topic, you should be able to quickly find resources to re-pin to your topical boards.
2. Pinterest’s Internal Search feature
As Pinterest continues to enhance its Search feature, it may soon become a powerful competitor to Google Search.
With Pinterest’s Guided Search, users can now use qualifiers to find related topics. As co-founder Evan Sharp states in this NPR article “ guided search helps you find things you didn’t know that you were looking for”.
So you can put this more powerful feature to use in your own search for content your target audience will love.
3. Secret Boards that Serve as a “Holding Area” in your Content Curation System
If your goal is to share several helpful resources a day on your social media accounts, then you already know how challenging it can be to keep up with all of the content you find on a daily or weekly basis.
Pinterest can be a very efficient tool for saving resources that will be shared later.
Use a secret board – I named mine “Daily Finds” – to save resources from Pinterest and any website.
Tip: Install Pinterest’s bookmarklet tool on your browser so you can easily Pin content on any site you visit. Go to the Goodies section to set it up: http://about.pinterest.com/goodies/.
The following are 4 simple steps I take to use my Daily Finds board as a holding area in my content curation strategy:
Step 1: When I find an article I want to share later I quickly Pin it to my Daily Finds board. Then I continue searching for more articles.
Note: I find articles through RSS feeds I’ve saved into Feedly, Lists on Twitter and Facebook, sites like AllTop, as well as Pins I find on Pinterest.
Step 2: I go back later to my Daily Finds board on Pinterest and share the articles with their original article link on my sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. If I’m not posting them “live”, I use the Buffer App or Hootsuite to schedule each post.
Step 3: After sharing an article to my other social sites, I’ll then Pin it from my secret Daily Finds board to a public board on Pinterest where it is now seen in the home feed of all my Pinterest followers.
Step 4: Finally, I’ll go back and delete the original Pin from my Daily Finds board to keep the number of articles “in holding” at a manageable level. Since I curate a large number of articles each week, I like to keep my Daily Finds board populated with only the current week’s best articles. You may not need to delete Pins here if you’re not curating a large number of resources each day.
Another option (instead of deleting all the Pins as mentioned above) is to keep your favorite articles on the Daily Finds board and then turn the board into a public board and rename it something like “Favorite Pins” or “The Very Best of ____” (put your topic in the blank). This way, your Followers can easily find the best results of your content curation.
Note: Once you make a secret board public, you can NOT set it back to secret again. (So you’d need to create a new Daily Finds secret board if you make your original one public.)
So there are 3 ways for using Pinterest as a content curation tool. If you already love this social platform, you may find these ideas a much more enjoyable way of finding interesting content for your other social sites. And if you’re not yet using Pinterest, you should look into it as the site continues to grow in popularity and in online search strength.
photo credit(derived from): fancycwabs via photopin cc
About Terry League